MONTREAL – In many professions, certain physical attributes are desirable. Ballet dancers must have strong legs and feet. Pianists are known for their long fingers. Singers must have good pitch. In the food world, one ideally should be born with a fine palate, that is, a carpet of discerning tastebuds that can identify the Gorgonzola undertones in aged meat, the hazelnutty notes in pata negra, apricot pit flavour in Third Wave coffee, and that particular lead pencil taste you get in a mature Château Lafite. True gourmets don’t really have likes and dislikes, as every flavour is appreciated for what it is, be it the intensely fishy taste of monkfish liver (ugh) or that exotic sort of soapiness you get from tonka beans. Our tastebuds aren’t there so much to say good or bad, but to help us enjoy the roller coaster of flavours available to analyze. So, like that grace or sense of rhythm, coming into this world with a super-sensitive palate is a tremendous asset to the gourmet set.

Or is it? Turns out, those super sensitive taste buds aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.

When I arrived in cooking school in 1988, I was the only English-speaking student in my class. “You will never get anywhere in this profession,” said my French-from-France teacher before adding, “It’s not your fault, you have an English palate.” So before I had even cracked an egg or assembled a canapé, my teacher informed me that my anglo-saxon tastebuds would eventually be my downfall. For the next 25 years, I strove to prove him wrong.

Let’s start off with the fact that many of the greatest wine tasters and writers, including Jancis Robinson and Hugh Johnson, are Brits. It’s easy to say the English have terrible palates based on the once-awful reputation of English cuisine. But truth is, it’s a lot more complicated than that. It’s about reference points, openness and the sheer amount of food that passes your lips. And then there are the supertasters.

A term coined by Yale University professor Linda Bartoshuk in the 1990s, “supertasters” were first identified as a group of individuals who could detect a bitter aftertaste to saccharine. Bartoshuk also discovered that supertasters’ tongues were densely populated with papillae (those little bumps on your tongue). This elite category of flavour-fiends find sugar to be that much sweeter, salt to be that much stronger, and greens like spinach, and even lettuce, to be intolerably bitter. Turns out, supertasters aren’t even all that rare, as it’s estimated 25 per cent of the population are supertasters, 50 per cent of us are mid-range tasters and the remaining 25 per cent are non-tasters.

There are many tests to determine whether you are a supertaster, the easiest being to rub a bit of blue food colouring on the tip of your tongue in a circle the size of a quarter. Then, try to count the number of tastebuds highlighted. If you count over thirty, chances are you are a supertaster. On my 9-year-old son’s tongue, I counted at least that many. On mine, I got to about eight. Maybe my teacher had a point? But hold on there. Studies also show that women, Asians, Africans and South Americans are more inclined to be supers. So much for his Gallic superiority claims! And yet, this supertaster category may not be such a boon after all.

“A few years ago, I was given a test to see if I was a supertaster,” said the Gatineau-based sommelière Véronique Rivest. “They gave me a piece of paper to place on my tongue and told me to spit it out if I found it too bitter.”

Rivest, who nabbed the second spot in the World’s Best Sommelier competition in Tokyo last March, has more than a decade of training at tasting wines. If you were to rank star palates in Quebec these days, Rivest’s would top the list.

But is she a super? No. “It just tasted like paper to me,” said Rivest. “Turns out, I’m a non-taster.”

And yet Rivest claimed her talent for tasting is not due so much about the quality of her tastebuds, but her education. “I always say that everything in this business of wine tasting can be learned,” she said. “It’s also difficult to compare yourself to others internationally to see where you stand because more than half of what we are tasting is not about what we taste, but who we are and where we are from. Different cultures have different tolerances for sweetness, saltiness, spice. I love acidity, so wines with high acidity are my personal preference. But the most influential personality trait of mine that guides me is my curiosity. As much as my endless curiosity got me into trouble when I was a kid, it’s also what has led me to discoveries in what I do. I literally want to taste everything.”

Watching sommeliers at work, there is no missing another factor that plays greatly in their tasting abilities: memory. “All of those wine people who are naming the exact varietal, vintage, terroir … that’s all training,” Rivest said. When a wine taster swirls that chardonnay over his or her tongue and pronounces it a 2006 Corton-Charlemagne, they are trying to make a link between their tastebuds and their memory. In a way, it’s a guessing game. The victor will not be the one who tastes the wine best so much as he or she who remembers that taste from the last time — or times — it has been tasted. This explains the sheer number of wines a pro like Rivest samples on a daily basis, which can reach a staggering 80 wines a day. It’s not so much about tasting the wine as developing a repertory of reference points to draw from. The memory gives you the strength to identify them and that curiosity Rivest mentioned offers the taster the broader reach.

You don’t have to be a world-class sommelier to understand what having an experienced palate is all about. But like Rivest, you do have to be curious. You have to have a lot of food and wine cross those tastebuds. Like an Olympic athlete, you have to train. It works with food as well.

To determine whether that hamburger on your plate is one of the best out there, you can’t just have eaten your mom’s. You have to have eaten every burger you can get your hands on. Twice! Only then can you start ranking them from best to worst. That’s why food critics are at their best when they get older, for as the years rack up, the flavour references increase as well. Add some travel into the mix to get a taste of a Neapolitan pizza, or Burgundian coq au vin in its homeland, and now you’re getting somewhere. And for an even deeper appreciation of flavour: cook. Instead of endlessly sampling everyone else’s burger, try making one yourself that tastes like the terrific one you remember eating at that tavern in Vermont two years ago. No small challenge.

Eating in abundance may be bad for your waistline, but it’s essential for sharpening your palate. And if you don’t like something, try it again. Research has shown that you should taste an ingredient 15 times before finalizing whether you like it or not. Though potent French cheeses like Langres and Époisse may taste like a barnyard to some the first time, eventually you might find them to be fruity and nutty. That sea urchin you sampled might have been past its prime (super fresh sea urchin has a taste similar to passion fruit) and that squishy supermarket fig you hated no doubt tastes far better when picked fresh off a tree in the Mediterranean.

And what about the fussiest tasters of all, children? Research shows that children shun vegetables without ever having tasted them, that parents often neglect to offer kids enough variety and that many children are sensitive to bitter flavours. Perseverance is key, but studies show that after tasting vegetables 10 times, children will often learn to like them and even ask for more.

So instead of letting our tastebuds set the rules, let’s tame these eager receptors through a steady and adventurous education — and a thoroughly pleasant one at that.

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